Tag: Pyongyang

South Korean politicians and analysts are divided over North Korea’s proposal for a summit between dictator Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang. Some are supportive of the idea or, at least, think it is worth a few days of President Moon’s time, while others believe the summit could be counterproductive or even dangerous.

Despite the diplomatic “thaw” that made North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics possible and a general media atmosphere of excitement around Pyongyang’s relative openness after years of defiant isolation, South Korean officials say North Korea has not responded to their call for military talks.

The North Korea monitor site 38North published a report on Wednesday citing officials within the communist government suggesting that Pyongyang is “extremely serious” about the possibility of war with the United States, considering an American attack an existential threat to the country.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis confirmed on Monday that the United States has discussed with South Korea the option of employing tactical nuclear weapons to defend against North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Prior to President Trump’s inauguration, North Korea made it clear it was prepared to give the new U.S. administration time to review the policy and come up with something better than President Obama’s.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday titled, “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account.” The secretaries argue that the Trump administration is using a “peaceful pressure campaign” to achieve the “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a dismantling of the regime’s ballistic missile programs.”

Reuters reported on Wednesday that China’s state-run National Petroleum Corporation has suspended fuel sales to North Korea for an undetermined period of time. CNPC is the primary supplier of fuel to North Korea.

The family of the now deceased University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier kept his Jewish faith a secret so officials could negotiate his release from North Korea, according to an official who negotiated the student’s release.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced on Tuesday morning that North Korea has released 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016. Unfortunately, there are reports Warmbier lapsed into a coma for unknown reasons shortly after his last public appearance over a year ago.

Guamanians are more and more concerned with the rising potential of a North Korean missile strike hitting this U.S. territory, the closest U.S. soil to Pyongyang, Guam’s Lt. Gov. Ray Tenorio told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview here this week.

TEL AVIV – Gaza-based terror group Hamas on Sunday thanked North Korea for its support of the group’s war against the “Zionist entity,” saying that Israel was “the leader of evil and terrorism in the world.”

Satellite photography reportedly shows that North Korea is preparing its Punggye-ri nuclear test site for another detonation, probably timed to coincide with celebrations of national founder Kim Il-sung’s 105th birthday this weekend.

February has proven to be a big month for North Korea. In two very different but frightening ways, it has demonstrated a capability to strike out at targets. It has made clear no one is safe should Pyongyang wish to reach out and touch—or kill—someone.

South Korea and Japan are looking to China and Russia, permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, to aid in their quest to stop North Korea from conducting yet another nuclear test, following the nation’s fifth and most powerful one yet.

A South Korean military source told the national outlet Yonhap that his government is ready to reduce Pyongyang “to ashes” after the latest North Korean nuclear test, with “every Pyongyang district… completely destroyed.”

The truth has a way of slipping through even the most tightly clenched totalitarian fingers. Such was the case with Under the Sun, a documentary co-created by a Russian filmmaker and North Korea’s psychotic regime. It was supposed to depict a happy family living in the Worker’s Paradise, but it ended up exposing Pyongyang’s propaganda machine.

North Korea still has a perfect failure record launching ballistic Musudan missiles, according to American and South Korean intelligence reports, but one of two missiles launched on Wednesday reached an altitude of 620 miles, the best yet on record.

On Wednesday, South Korean officials rejected yet another call from Pyongyang for bilateral talks, as the communist Kim Jong-un regime pushes for a “reunification” plan that would put Seoul under his command.

North Korea wrapped up its four-day Workers’ Party conference on Monday by declaring it would continue working on nuclear weapons — for “defensive” purposes, of course — and threatening to wipe out South Korea, if their neighbor “opts for war.”

Christian activists in South Korea say a pastor secretly working with North Korean defectors was “murdered” by Pyongyang’s state agents, demanding the Chinese government find those responsible for his death. They suspect North Korean agents crossed the border into China to commit the crime.

A new report out of North Korea claims that the government of dictator Kim Jong-un has banned weddings, funerals, major assemblies, and entering and exiting the capital, Pyongyang, as the nation prepares for the first Workers’ Party Congress in 36 years.

South Korean military officials have obtained satellite photos of what appears to be a replica of Seoul’s presidential office, the Blue House (Cheongwadae), built in North Korea, apparently intended to be used for missile target practice.

Kim Jong-il’s personal sushi chef says he recently met with his son, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, who told him he has “no intention” of going to war with the West and only orders illegal missile launches when he gets “exasperated.”

Next month, North Korea will convene the first Korean Workers’ Party Congress in 36 years. The impending event has been seen by analysts as influencing everything the secretive Communist state does – an opportunity to refresh the North Korean peoples’ sense of “unity” with their oppressive government and consolidate the power of dictator Kim Jong Un’s cabal of relatively young leaders.

The government of North Korea has announced that it is seeking to conduct its fifth-ever nuclear test, placing a miniaturized warhead on a ballistic missile, “in a short time,” following weeks of threats that Pyongyang will attack South Korea and the United States with nuclear bombs if it feels such a move necessary.

One of the more curious Panama Papers stories comes from North Korea, which suffered a massive Internet outage for three hours on Wednesday, two days after the North Korea’s Daedong Credit Bank was revealed as a client of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Reports out of North Korea suggest that at least two individuals, one of whom is a Chinese citizen, have been arrested attempting to cross the border into North Korea to execute an assassination plot against Kim Jong-un.